7 in 10 internet users across 24 countries say they’ve shared some type of content on social media sites in the past month, according to new survey results from Ipsos OTX. Given the growing popularity of visually-focused sites such as Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat, it’s no surprise that pictures emerge as the content type respondents are most inclined to share, with 43% claiming to have done so in the past month.

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Beyond pictures, the study finds that opinions, status updates regarding one’s activities, and links to articles (each at 26%) are most likely to be shared.

The Ipsos survey also indicates that a significant proportion of internet users are sharing other types of content on social media, including:

Something they like or recommend, such as products, services, movies, and books (25%);

News items (22%);

Links to other websites (21%);

Reposts from other people’s social media posts (21%);

Status updates of what they’re feeling (19%);

Video clips (19%);

Plans for future activities, trips, and plans (9%); and

Other types of content (10%).

Who’s Most Likely to Share?

While 7 in 10 overall claim to share content, some demographic groups are more likely to engage in this behavior than others. Respondents aged under 35 are most likely to share (81%), a completely unsurprising result. Still, about 7 in 10 online users aged 35-49 said they had shared content on social media site! s during ! the past month, as did a majority 55% of respondents aged 50-64.

Google+ Is The Fourth Most-Used Smartphone App (GlobalWebIndex)It’s no surprise that Google Maps is the most popular mobile app, used by 54% of the global smartphone population last month, according to a recent survey by GlobalWebIndex. However, the mobile apps for YouTube and Google+ were used by 35% and 30% of smartphone users respectively, which means that Google owns three of the four most widely used apps on smartphones.

Advertisers want visibility across platforms and across verticals. No company does that better than Google — which has the top location and video apps, and the second most popular social media app.

Havas CEO David Jones said in a statement, “I’m not sure this is in the best interests of their clients or their talent. Clients today want us to be faster, more agile, more nimble and more entrepreneurial, not bigger and more bureaucratic and more complex.”

And can it be more agile at such a large scale? Particularly “in a world where digital and technology have made scale irrelevant.”

Jones continued, “Our business is very simple – it’s about clients and talented employees – and as I said, I’m not sure this move is good for either of them.”

But Omnicom CEO John Wren said at the press conference today that “anyone who is concerned about any of this should not be.”

According to TorrentFreak the RIAA hit its 20 million link milestone just last May, a number that took a whole year to reach. Now, the RIAA’s racked up an additional five million in a mere six weeks. To pull that off, the RIAA has to be doling out those DMCA requests more than twice as fast as it was just months ago.

Even with this new, blistering pace, the RIAA is only the second most takedown-happy organization Google has to deal with. Number one is the Indian-based anti-piracy organization Degban which is ahead with an all-time score of around 28 mil. Still, it looks like the RIAA is running faster all the time, and at this rate they’ll be number one in no time. We’ll have to just wait and see if this magically solves piracy. [TorrentFreak]

In the past year, we’ve seen three quarters of the top 100 brands establish active profiles on Google+ and their customers have followers. These brands now have 20.9 million fans which is a growth of 9400% since December 2011 when only 222,000 followed them collectively.

But this growth isn’t that widespread across the hundred. In fact, the top ten brands on Google+ account for four out of five followers (78% of the total top 100 fans) which is 16.3 million followers. Four out of ten of these are big automotive brands including BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan and Porsche, who are definitely taking advantage of the visual nature of Google+ (click on the image to the left to enlarge).

In the last year, there’s also been a marked improvement of Google+ pages showing in – surprise, surprise – Google search results from 0% to 20% in 2012. Obviously the marked improvement in followers and results have been due to major brand adoption and 25% of the top 100 integrating Google+ into their home page.

Youtube on the other hand, is continuing to grow into the brand space, slowly shedding itself of the rapid association with cat videos. 87% of the top brands have their own YouTube channel and collectively the top 100 have had over 3.15 billion views of their videos.

As you can see in the chart above, Red Bull, Google and Apple lead other brands in terms of subscribers and as YouTube makes the move to paid subscriptions, we’re sure to see even more broadcasters and brands follow.

There’s been indications that Apple staged something of a comeback in the US during the fourth quarter, owing partly to an iPhone 5-related spike. ComScore’s smartphone share data for December appears to bear that out. It estimates that the Apple claimed a 36.3 percent slice of the American market in the last month of 2012: that’s a noticeable boost from 35 percent in November, and two points up since the iPhone 5’s September arrival. Android remained on top at 53.4 percent, but it was once again unusually static, edging down from highs earlier in the year. Other platforms took their usual blows, although there’s no doubt some hopes for revival.

Just don’t anticipate looking for overall cellphone market share. ComScore has switched to focusing on smartphones, and it’s telling a different story than we’ve seen in the past. When only smartphones count, Samsung’s December share left it in second place, at 21 percent — still an increase over prior months, but not as large as Apple’s 36.3 percent. The biggest surprise is LG’s rise to 7.1 percent and fifth place, quite possibly due to the Optimus G and Nexus 4. Enough shifted that the market may be even less recognizable in 2013, for better or worse.

“Fully 85% of those polled said they would watch a video that educated them about a product they were interested in for at least 1 minute. However, the percentage of customers willing to spend a minute watching a video that specifically lacked a demonstration dropped to 65 percent,” eMarketer wrote.

It’s no surprise where viewers are seeing these ads. YouTube, obviously, is the most-watched source of product videos.

But Facebook — not traditionally known as a video medium — is a huge source of product demo videos, too.

LinkedIn recently released a series of posts showing the desks and workspaces of some of the world’s most successful people. Some, like T.Boone Pickens, who’s had the same desk since the 80s, or Sequoia Capital’s Michael Moritz, who keeps a small bottle of whiskey at his “for the bad surprise,”

Analysts have quietly raised holiday quarter iPhone estimates. Why do that if demand is tanking? Shaw Wu of Sterne Agee said today that demand is “robust.”

Analysts could be wrong, but here’s another piece of evidence in their favor. ChangeWave surveyed 4,061 people in North America about their interest in smartphones. 50% of them said they plan to buy an iPhone in the next 90 days, which is right in line with Apple’s previous demand after a big iPhone launch.

If demand was truly crumbling as some would have you believe, would this chart look like this?

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Digital Consigliere

Dr. Augustine Fou is Digital Consigliere to marketing executives, advising them on digital strategy and Unified Marketing(tm). Dr Fou has over 17 years of in-the-trenches, hands-on experience, which enables him to provide objective, in-depth assessments of their current marketing programs and recommendations for improving business impact and ROI using digital insights.